Angelina Jolie sells Winston Churchill painting for record £7m

A painting by former British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill, which was owned by Angelina Jolie, has sold for £7m at auction in London, the BBC reports.

The sale price was almost four times the top pre-sale estimate and beat the previous record for a Churchill painting, which was just under £1.8m.

The Tower Of The Koutoubia Mosque, painted in Marrakesh during World War Two, was sold to an anonymous buyer.

A Christie’s spokesperson called it “Churchill’s most important work”.

“Aside from its distinguished provenance, it is the only landscape he made during the war,” the spokesperson added.

Churchill, a keen artist, took inspiration from the Moroccan city and painted The Tower Of The Koutoubia Mosque oil work following the Casablanca Conference in 1943.

He went on to give the finished piece to fellow wartime leader, US president Franklin Roosevelt.

The work eventually found its way into the hands of actress Angelina Jolie when it went on sale in New Orleans in 2011.

Frenzied bidding at Monday’s sale, much of it over the phone, led to the auction gavel coming came down at the record £7m sale price, smashing the pre-sale expectations of £1.5 to £2.5m.

Christie’s said the sale figure with commission was more than £8.2m.

Two more of Churchill’s paintings also went under the hammer, with the three works together fetching £9.43m.